PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 8259, 11 August 1888, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

(From Oago Witness..)

Not everybody who can command the customary togs, the half-guinea ticket, and an appetite is qualified to dine.wjth the' Old Boys.' To dine conformably, you must be able to becomo, for the nonce,.an old boy yourself. If you make a speech—as, for your sins and other peoples', yoii may perhaps be required to do—it must be tho speech of an old boy—not too old. I question whether Sir Robert Stout understands this; but Mr Justice Williams understands it. His Honor's after-dinner-speech was very much in the happy Tern of Oliver Wendall Holmes song, written for a similar occasion:

Has thero any old fellow got mixed with the

boys ? If there has, take him' out, without making a

noise. Hang the Almanac's cheat, and the Catalogue's

spite! Old Time is a liar 1 We're twenty to-night!

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have

been told, Of talking (in public) as if wo were old; — That boy we cdl " Doctor," and this we ca]

" Judge";— It's a neat little fiction—of course its al

fudge. I am not saying that the Judge was roysterous or boisterous, or anything of that sort—far from it I but, all the same, he made a genuine old boy's speech, the irresistible humour of it keeping the table in a roar. This is my ideal of post-prandial eloquence —no dyspeptic statistics, no facts, no figures, only light and graceful talk that .titillates the diaphragm and assists Nature in what tho Judge called" the sacred process of digestion." Sir Robert Stout has always something to say, and never says it ill; but Sir Robert cannot hit this vein ;Dr Belcher, on the mother hand, when not oppressed by the responsibilities of chairmanship, is an effective after-dinner speaker. The doctor concluded his reply to the toast of "Tho School" with a humorous fable or apologue, which, though it excited " much laughter," needs to this hour an explanation.. A female elephant trampling through a stubble field trod the life out of a partridge, and then, in maternal pity and by way pf compensation, sat down on her nest'of young ones. If this is a parable the bearings of it lie in the application. Has it an occult reference to the Board of Governors, or the Ministry, or Mr Fish's attacks on secondary education 1 I cannot say, nor can anybody tell me. To me the meaning is as dark as the whereabouts of Jonathan Roberts to Mr Justice Williams.

Young as is the Otago High School there is already, it would seem, division among its alumni. The old identity and young iniquity elements are' clearly distinguishable in tho ranks of its ex-pupils. The young iniquities come to the front in fall force on such an occasion as the old boys'club dinner last* week. They are on tha committee, which, according to one malcontent, "is composed of youths," thoy no doubt frame the menu, they invite judges and politicians to the festive board, they aro responsible for the inclusion of ■ wine (not champagne, but sound claret and sherry), and they fix the price of tickets at too high a figure to suit the taste of tho grumblers. What the old identities demand is a five-»hilling dinner, beer, and no judges, politicians, or rectors. Any speeches to be made they will make themselves; any social tone to bo given to the gathering thoy will give themselves. (The High" School boys, it was remarked by one speaker, shono socially.) It may be oonceded that there is some reasonableness in this view. Ex-High School boys resident here have the scene of their former triumphs and tortures ever before them, and there is less romance than there might be in reviving school associations. Hood's reflections on viewing the scenes of his early birohings would never occur to a modern High School boy:—

Tho summoned class; the awful bow; I wonder who is master now, And wholesome anguish sheds, How many ushers he employs, How many maids to see the boys Have nothing in their heads. The High. School boy who has merely shifted from the olass room to the office ih his nativo town is troubled with no such interesting speculations. What he wants is something more prosaic. To see tho other fellows, to have something to eat and to have it cheap.

To restore public confidence in that perilous ledge at Purakanui is a task that will keep tho Railway department fully employed for some time to come, and thoy are tolerably certain to fail oven then. Nothing will convoy a sense of absolute security now savo to disembark the passengers and convoy them over tho brow of tho hill in perambulators, or round the base of the cliffs in ferry boats. To be drawn by a locomotive rouud an Alpine ledge, midway between heaven nnd earth, and sometimes within a foot or two of the giddy precipice was glorious sport so long as we wore convinced lhat it mas sport, and that tho apparent danger was a figment. Tho Port Chalmers poople desired that we should journey that way for Hie fun of tho thing, so did the Into Mr Macandrew and various olhor gontlemcn, whom we through our Govornmont wero only too glad to obligo. But, tho fun grows Hat and unprofitable directly It becomes level betting about an aviilancho.and short odds only against train, passengers, and engine being launched suddenly Into infinity" with an oarthqnako on top of them. That l.lioro would bo a remedy against tho Government is probable, but it is n romudy very few ot tho passengers would clniin novo through their executors. The miporln-Mvo good luck of the Now Zealand riiihviiva in having hitherto escaped any accident involving loss of lifo on a lino which ono iln.v'M ruin renders perilous to the last ih'gnm,' in aninoUiing lo bo marvelled at. On iMoiniiiy last l-ho North express within a few iniloft wan hl.uolc up three times by landslips find finally blocked at Purakanui Cliffs. Why, if a muster mariner were informed that every rainfall would bring him faoo to, fnco with such peril as this ho would be driven either to rum or melancholia. Tho one gleam of sunshino in this gloomy outlook is the reflection, which wo may hug de-1

lightcdly, that no New Zealand Government is or was blameablo for the freak of sending railway locomotives cliff climbing. . Tho Government, we are given to understand, is not " ofliciully " aware (oven now, mark you) that there wa,s any other route. A deliverance which sets the oflicial conscience thoroughly at rest, and is vastly satisfactory and reassuring to all concerned.

In re the Rev. Mr Waddell and Socialism, Mr J, Wood writes to tho Times that "on

tlie whole he agrees with ' Civis.'" That is quite right; but " Civis " is not clear that on the whole he agrees with Mr J.Wood.

It seems to be Mr AVood's opinion that ministers of religion should limit themselves to evangelical preaching, letting severely alone such secular a,nd semi-political topics as Socialism. Now, that is. not my opinion. Ministers of religion are generally men of reading, and men of broad sympathies—Mr Waddell himself may be taken as an example;—why should they not give us winter evening lectures on subjects lying beyond the horizon of our petty provincial world? A lecture by Mr Waddell on Socialism may not possess tho maddening interest of a skating handicap at the rink or a discussion in the presbytery on.tho " Reign of Grace," yet might provide more wholesome and profitable entertainment than either, But then it is not well when such lectures develop into a Socialist^n>/;a^«?«Za, In a country where there are no millionaires and no horeditary paupers little good can come qE emphasising class distinctions and spreading sooial disoontent. With industry and thrift we can get along well enough— bad times to the contrary, notwithstanding— and couldn't be helped in the least by a Socialist revolution.

Socialism and Anarchy seem, perhaps, far away dangers not in tho least likely to trouble our peace. Yet thero is an "AusJ tralian Socialist League," with two newspapers to propagate its doctrines, and in Melbourno there is an Anarchists' Club. This latter body (as I learn from its organ, the "Australian Radical") advocates "tho principle of individual sovereignty," and aims at bringing about " a form of society in which rule does not exist." Thero is one initial difficulty, however, which the Melbourno Anarchists at present find insuperable. No way has yet been discovered by which persons who insist on individual sovereignty can combine for common action, and a club of Anarchists cannot, without sacrificing its most sacred principle, submit eyen to the temporary authority of a ohairman. At one J meeting Mr Joseph Symes, of evil fame as a I secularist lecturor, did somehow get into tho' chair and .attempted to keep his brother Anarchists in order, whereupon Mr Brookhouse, an -importation from Chicago, where tho principles of Anarchy are particularly well understood, announced his protest. He said: "We will oppose this chairman who wishes to mould our opinions for ns; we will assert our independence before this chairman, as my forefathers in America asserted their independence in the teeth of George, the chairman of England." A chairman or a king it is all one to Anarchy; neithor can be permitted to exist. The usurper, Symes, afterwards remarked in his "Liberator" that "he would not be surprised at any outrage that the. others * might perpetrate,-^rthey might even' blow, him'up with dynamite." If" they do, let us hope that it will be at a full meeting of the Club, whereby Symes, Brookhouse, and their whole menagerie of unatics may ascend to the empyrean tolethor. - '

Schoolmasters' English I Here is a specimen taken from .an article in this month's "Schoolmaster": — .

" Tlie child is parent to. the grown-up person," if I may be permitted to slightly alter an old adage, so that, "if the most captivating study of manldnd is ' Man,'" that study must necessarily begiu with the child. First of all, I should liko to draw atte-» tion to the nursery from which the children eminate, or ougkt to emanate.

Wordsworth wrote, " Tho child is father of the man,"-but that is not elegant enough, not 'accurate enough, for a New Zealand schoolmaster, ''Why, 'the ohild' may be' a girl, tlien what be'c»mes of your genders 1 We cannot say 'the child is father of the .man'; we must say' the child is the parent of the grown-up person'!" "Having thus corrected Wordsworth and brought him up to the level of tho Sixth Standard, this pain-ful-pedant proceeds to improve Pope, whoso line, "The proper study of mankind is man," becomes "The . most captivating study to mankind is man 1" 'I'hen in the next spntenoo we read that children " ema-' hate, or ought to emanate," from tho nursery I Prodigious! Is this the kind of English the, young New Zealander is going to talk and write when ho " omanates " from the State school? Mr Ruskin somewhere remarks that of late years his literary style is said to have degenerated. " I was obliged to write too young," he says, " when I knew only half truths, and was eager to set them fijlHi by what I thought fine words. People used to call me a good writer then; now they say I can't write at all; because, for instance, if I think anybody's house is on fire, I only say Sir, your.house is on fire; whereas formerly I.used to say, 'Sir, the residential abode in which you probably passed the delightful days of your youth is in a state of inflammation,' and everybody used to like the effect of the two p's in' probably passed,' and of the two d's in ' delightful days.'" It. is Mr' Buskin's earlier literary style, not his later, that seems to have been chosen as a model by the New Zealand schoolmaster. Civis.-

"CIVIS"' MISREPRESENTATIONS, TO THH EDITOB.

Sm,—The style of writing affected by "Civis" is calculated to lead the person adopting it dangerously near the extreme boundary of trnth if thereby he can score a point. In this, case. " Civis " has been led in that direction.

In re Mr Waddell's lecture, the difference between " Civis " and me is this: I agree with " Civis " and know it, he agrees with me and does not know it. I havo nowhero said that clergymen ought not to . deal with such themes as Socialism, &c, quite the reverse. I have ev«rr held that they do not take enough interest in tho practical affairs of life; but I have said that the lecturer was wrong in holding forth Socialism as the hope of society in any form, and I have said that there is a better Bible and a purer Gospel for a preacher than Carl Marx's " bible." , " Civis" spins what he thinks I ought to have said out of his own inner consciousness, aud then he comments on it as the thing I actually did say. If he prefers persiflage to ordinary writing so he it, but that style of writing is intolerable whero.not grounded on fact. As the abovementioned misrepresentation is sure to appear in your columns to-morrow, perhaps you will at the same time permit this cor reotion to sppear.—l am, &c.,

August 10.

J. Wood,

THE LABOUR BUREAU.

The fortnightly meeting of the Board of Advice of the Labour Bureau was held yesterday, there beiug present—Dr . Hislop (chairman, Messrs Logan, Martin, and Allan (secretary). The secretary submitted his report, as follows :— «.

Since tho last meeting of the board tho following applicants for employment on relief wirks, after investigation iuto their circumstances, received orders for work. There were sent to the Tomahawk road, on -July 27th 14, and on 31st 15 ;—total, 28. On 31st, to St. Clair sea wall, lv; August 2nd, 10, aud 6th inst. 9 ;— total, 2D. There are now 79 men altogether employed on these two suburban workt. Tho pressure for employment by wor'slug mon has very muoh increased since last meeting. Every case received attention, and work was provided for the most necessitous of tlie nppllc-mts. There ore now several urgent cases of married men with families under consideration for whom work will be provided next week in widening the Portobello road. Thero is scarcely any demand for men for country labour on farms or stations. Applications by employers—2 ploughmen, 3 lads to milk, 1 farm servant. Registered—2 ploughmen. 1 cook, 1 shepherd, 2 station hands. Engaged —1 ploughman at 17s Cd per week, 1 do at £10 per annum, 2 farm servants at 10s per week, 1 lad at Os, 1 do at 53.

The report was adopted. There was laid on the table a letter of date 31st July, from the Public Works department, in reply to the board's resolution of 13th ult: — Public Works department, Wellington, 31st July ISSB. Sir,—l am directed by the Minister of Public Works to'acknowledgo the receipt of your letter of 13th inst.", forwarding copy of the minutes of your board's meeting held on that dato, and inquirirg what further Government works will be available for tho "unemployed" when the Hindon road is completed. In reply I am to state that, Bhould it bo lound necessary to provide further relief work in tlie Otago district, it Is proposed to put a portion of the Middlemarch section of tho Otago Central railway in hand ; and provision for this work will accordingly be made in tho Public Works Estimates shortly to.be submitted to Parliament. -1 have, &_.,

11. J. 11. Blow, Assistant Undcr-secrctary for Public Works,

—It is proposed to organise the French people into n national standing army, as a protection against monarchical aggression. A WoNiiKiiirui. Food akd Mkmcink known and used by Physicians all over the world. " Scott's Emulsion" not only gives flesh and strength by virtue of its own nutritious properties, but creates an appetite for food that builds up the wasted body. Read the following:—" Scott's Emuision " is, in my opinion, an excellent aud valuable compound. I havo given it to Consumptive patients, and havo been delighted with tho results obtained. It is pleasant to tho taste, and can bo borne by the most Bcnsitivo stomach. E. A. Rodway, M.D., Bntter-Kuowle, Darlington, Eng. Largo and small bottles at all Chemists, 4s 6d and 2s Od. i